In an effort to stop the seemingly unstoppable rise of social media giants Facebook and Google, the founders of the News site supergoodcontent have created an alternative to the tech giants, and it already has more than 200,000 likes on Facebook.
The post has been published to Reddit’s /r/news community, which is home to many thousands of active news consumers. This is a great way to reach out to the general public and get your story read by people who are interested in your topic.
The News Corp-owned Knewz.com, which launched in January 2023, has closed.The purpose of the platform was to provide aggregate information operating across the political spectrum.
What attracted publishers perhaps most was the fact that Knewz works without the perceived bias of Google and Facebook.
However, there is no evidence to support this claim of bias.
is working against the technology giants
The principle of the platform was to present original information from publications that Knewz believed had been downgraded in Google and Facebook search results.
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The platform will favor original reporting over repeating articles and will publish stories from companies large and small, regardless of their political stance. Knewz will also share data directly with publishers.
News Corp spokesman James Kennedy said:
We view this issue with an eye toward recognizing and promoting journalistic provenance and attracting traffic and data from publishers, including subscriber sites, in a way that respects their original work…. We want people to see a wide range of information and opinions from local, specialist and national sources, without bias or prejudice.
Instead of publishing the articles directly to the website, Knewz provided a link to the original article, providing additional visibility beyond the search engine and social platform.
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News articles are recorded with the help of a human curator and scanning software.
Knewz was founded in the midst of geopolitical turmoil
Around the same time the Knewz platform was launched, Australia was trying to pass legislation that would have required Google and Facebook to pay publishers to display their news content.
Google eventually agreed to pay for Google News content in Australia and France and has since launched Google News Showcase, which pays publishers for content published on Showcase.
Why Knewz is Closed
News Corp owns several successful publications such as the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal in the US, The Sun and The Times in the UK and many others internationally.
What led to the closure of Knewz after so much success elsewhere?
According to the notice of closure published on the company’s website, Knewz was not profitable enough to continue operating.
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The memo also contains recommendations and links to other News Corp websites. So although the platform has only been around for just 18 months, News Corp could benefit from the site in the near future.
The platform may have achieved its goal, with Google rewarding publishers for their content. If the company was hoping to become a direct competitor to the technology giant, it certainly hasn’t become one. Last month, Google reported that millions of users post stories to the web every day.
This is not the first time a platform has been created where confrontation with a technology giant has played at least a small part in achieving a goal.
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Earlier this year, Search Engine Journal reported on a new ad-free search engine developed by former Google employees.
Google and Facebook will always have competition, but the question is when will something happen that will shake the tech giants, and what will that look like?
Photo credits
Screenshot by Rebecca Dunn, July 2023
Sources:Bloomberg, The Verge.
